Australia’s first Japanese POW, Hajime Toyoshima, attacked Pearl Harbor before Darwin

Hajime Toyoshima was a crack fighter pilot who helped attack Pearl Harbor, but it was an Aussie machinegun that felled him.

The plane flown by Japanese pilot Hajime Toyoshima and shot down during the Battle of Darwin.

Hajime Toyoshima had a knack for turning up at some of the most momentous events of World War II.

In 1941, he flew his Zero in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, 10 weeks later he machinegunned the wharf in the Battle of Darwin, and in 1944 he instigated the Cowra Breakout, the only land battle of WWII fought on Australian soil.

Petty Officer Toyoshima’s story is told in a double episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, with historian Mat McLachlan:

While it has long been known Toyoshima flew in the Battle of Darwin, McLachlan’s research has established the Zero pilot also flew in the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor.

As McLachlan details in his new book, The Cowra Breakout, Toyoshima became Australia’s first prisoner of war after his Zero struck trouble while flying back to his aircraft carrier after the attack on Darwin on February 19, 1942.

Zero pilot Hajime Toyoshima’s plane crashed on Melville Island.

“He was shot at from the ground by machinegun fire from Australians defending on the ground and one lucky shot – or unlucky from his point of view – pierced the nose of his aircraft and actually severed an oil line,” McLachlan says.

Toyoshima crash-landed on inhospitable Melville Island, where he wandered for days in dense scrub hoping to be rescued by the Japanese.

Instead, he stumbled across a group of local Tiwi women and children who were out gathering honey from wild bees’ nests.

Author Mat McLachlan.

The Cowra Breakout, by Mat McLachlan.

McLachlan says their first-hand accounts of the touching encounter suggest Toyoshima was much more personable than records of his life suggest.

“Toyoshima was in his flight suit, pretty scratched up and banged up, his face was cut after hitting his head during the landing,” he says.

“He actually picked up one of the babies who was lying nearby and was playing with it a little bit and was speaking to one of the children.”

The women reported their strange find to their men, who handed him over to authorities at a nearby RAAF base.

Toyoshima on Bathurst Island, shortly after his capture, with Sergeant Les Powell. Picture: Australian War Memorial

Toyoshima flew in the attack on Pearl Harbor and 10 weeks later Darwin.

The crashed Zero was found the next day, close to where the pilot was discovered.

“This was the first intact Zero to fall into Allied hands … so it gave the Allies a great opportunity to study a Zero for the first time, and it created a great deal of excitement within the Allied intelligence community,” McLachlan says.

But, in a failure of intelligence, the Zero was never linked to Toyoshima, who gave a fake name and story, and the opportunity was missed to interrogate a Zero pilot about the workings of the much-feared aircraft.

After his capture, Toyoshima went on to have an instrumental role in the Cowra Breakout, which claimed the lives of 234 Japanese prisoners of war and five Australians.

To learn more, listen to the interview with Mat McLachlan in the In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.